“I could not sleep.” Her hands, which had fluttered to his chest in their crash, moved slowly, as if she put a great deal of effort into studying the firmness of his flesh, the delineation of each honed muscle. She stilled as he took another deep breath of her scent. “Are you sniffing me, Duke?”
He winced at her incredulity and straightened to his superior height. Thank God for the darkness. His cheekbones went hot. “Of course not, Lady Boadicea. Why would I do such a ridiculous thing?”
Her caresses resumed, leisurely. Torturous. He wanted to push her out of reach and send her back to her chamber, yet he never wanted her to stop touching him.
“I pondered the selfsame question.” Her physical inquisition continued, traveling down his abdomen, her clever fingers undoing him. “And yet you inhaled, just as one might if a particularly aromatic dish had been laid before him. The sort of dish one could not wait to consume.”
Bloody fucking hell. Those low, wicked words sent a fresh bolt of heat to his cock. His dressing gown rendered it deuced difficult to hide the effect she had upon him. He was erect, pressing into her belly, and it was too late to push her away.
Anger swirled within him then, and he welcomed it, needing to banish this dangerous careen of desire. “Do you think to goad me with more of your bawdy references, princess? Or perhaps you really do want me to consume you, like an aromatic dish. Is that it?” He led her backward, not stopping until he had pinned her against the wall with his much larger body. “Should I consume you here? Now? What did you read in your book that stirs you most? Do you want my tongue on you? In you? Say it, Lady Boadicea.”
“I did not intentionally collide with you in this hall, for it is dark and I’ve an abysmal sense of direction.” She leaned into him, and she had to have rocked on her toes, for her hot breath stole over his mouth in a maddening impression of a kiss. “But how you do intrigue, Duke. Continue. Where were you? Ah, yes. Your tongue, I believe.”
Did her wickedness know no bounds? Did she have no shame? He didn’t know whether to kiss her or throw her over his shoulder and deliver her back to the duchess’s chamber where he’d last left her. He had intended to shock her with his vulgarity, but instead she sidestepped him and leveraged his words against him. For hearing her refer to his tongue made him want to wield it. To take her mouth, lick into the satin depths, to do far more wicked things elsewhere.
“You are impertinent.” He steeled himself against the lush enticement of her form and innuendos. For an innocent, she possessed a shocking imagination and vocabulary.
Of course, there was the possibility that she wasn’t, in fact, an innocent at all. It would explain a great deal. However, he felt certain that her boldness had its roots in her personality and not in her depth of experience. Either way, he supposed he would discover the truth soon enough when they were man and wife.
“You are large,” she pronounced.
He sucked in a breath at her shocking statement. His shaft was pressed against her. Of course she would have felt it. But remarking upon it…
“Tall,” she added, sounding smug. “An insufferable oaf. Do you mean to keep me trapped against this wall all evening, Duke, or will you take pity and let me free?”
Spencer blinked. The minx was forever three steps ahead of him. It vexed him that she could have taken a severe tumble from a horse and yet turn up in the midst of the night with her sauciness and still make him want her. “That depends.”
“Upon?” Her hands were somehow once more upon him, studying him, sweeping over his abdomen and lower still.
“Jesus,” the sibilant whisper tore from him. Those small, elegant fingers—suited to playing over the keys of a piano—were a scant inch from his engorged prick. He caught her wrist in a firm grip, keeping her from the sort of foolishness that could only end with her nightdress around her waist and him deep inside her. It had been far too long for him, and she was far too tempting. If she touched his cock a second time, he did not trust what he would do. “Return to your chamber, princess.”
“I was attempting to do so,” she informed him, her tone lofty, “when you accosted me.”
“You threw yourself into my chest,” he corrected, but he somehow could not find it within him to release her wrist and step away from her. Her heat seeped into him, welcome and intoxicating. How perfectly her body fit to his, the supple curves melding to his hardness. There were a hundred other occupations he could be about at the moment—sleeping, reading, poring over the newspapers or his estate ledgers and correspondence, even drinking whisky—and yet he could not think of anything he longed to do more. He wished to remain where he was, memorizing the feeling of Lady Boadicea Harrington in the dark while she said wicked things and her scent settled about him like an opium cloud, sweet and intoxicating.
He could not recall when he had last felt so deliriously invigorated. So bloody alive.
“Surely if one of the two of us knows his way about in this sprawling manor, in the darkest pitch of night, it would be you, Duke,” she still found the temerity to argue.
Amazing. Nothing would knock it out of her, not even a fall from Damask Rose that would have made able-bodied men cry like babes newly born. She had not shed a tear, though she’d been undeniably shocked, the wind stolen from her. The fall had rattled her but it had not undone her. Lady Boadicea Harrington was a force of nature, as subtle as a hurricane, and he rather found himself admiring her pluck.
Clearly, the lateness of the hour had addled his mind.
“Of course I know my way,” he forced out. “But not when spirited minxes are skulking about in my path when they ought to be abed, resting as the well-trained physician who attended them recommended.”
“I am attempting to rest,” she muttered. “I cannot do it in that chamber. I was seeking the chamber originally assigned me. It would seem I am hopelessly lost, however, and the gentleman I came upon would rather seduce me than offer his assistance.”
“Seduce you?” He could not contain the mocking laugh that escaped him then. If she thought his nearness and slight touch were seduction, then she was indeed a true innocent. “Is that what you think this is?”
As he posed the question, he loosened his grip on her wrist, stroking the soft skin where her pulse pounded with his thumb. And then he canted his hips, pressing into her more fully, until he knew there was no doubt that she felt every inch of him. Her swift inhalation cut into the night.
“Duke,” she whispered, but her tone was not one of protest. Rather, it was akin to a sigh. An affirmation.
Yes, his body said. Take her. Haul her into your arms, carry her to the emerald chamber, and make her yours. He longed to. Wanted with a fierce desperation to lose himself so deep and hard inside her that nothing else could dare intervene. But reality intruded in the form of a creaking door and footsteps down the hall, along with the reminder that she had indeed suffered a fall from a horse that morning. She needed the rest that Dr. Martindale prescribed. She needed to recover. And he most certainly did not need to fuck her against the wall as if she were a lowly whore he would tup for the night and never see again. She would be his wife. His duchess.
He released her and stepped away, though the loss of her scalding heat and delicious curves reverberated through him. “Someone is here,” he whispered. “Do not say a word. Whilst I offer distraction, remove yourself to the duchess’s chamber, which is straight down this hall in the opposite direction and then two turns to your right. It is for your own good.”
Hoping she would for once in her life forego her inner hoyden and listen to caution, he stalked toward the sound of the interloper, which could only be his brother. In the absence of their guests, he and Harry alone had chambers in the east wing for the moment.
His eyes had already adjusted to the darkness, and as he reached the end of the hall, he finally recognized a tall, lean shadow. “Harry,” he said quietly, feeling awkward, for he had not spoken with his brother since the last interminable quarrel at the bal
l, and he felt guilty as hell for wanting the same woman his idealistic sibling imagined himself in love with.
Love was a fiction invented by fools, for fools. But Harry had yet to discover that the impractical dreams of one’s youth never translated into a reality. Life was bitter and bleak and ugly and rife with disappointment, hurt, and pain. The sooner Harry resigned himself to that excruciating truth, the better, for his sake.
“Bainbridge,” came his brother’s terse acknowledgment.
“What are you doing, lurking about at this bleak time of night?”
His attempt to infuse lightness into his tone fell flat even to his own ears, but he did not know how to speak to his brother. Didn’t know how to cut through his anger. Or even how to make sense of the events of the past few days. If he could explain how the lady he disapproved of as a wife for his impressionable younger brother would soon become his duchess, he would have. But he could not. Weakness? Stupidity? Lust?
Something else that was far more disturbing, with far greater implications?
He refused to contemplate it any further.
“I should ask the same question of you.” Suspicion colored Harry’s tone. “I could have sworn I heard a female voice.”
He stiffened. “I was going to the library for a whisky and a book. I neither saw nor heard anyone else.”
“I know she was here,” his brother said. “I can smell her perfume. By God, Bainbridge, you better not have further compromised Bo. Have you not done enough damage already by taking my bride for yourself?”
He winced, Harry’s taunt finding its mark. For the first time, a strange, unwanted thought occurred to him. What if Lady Boadicea had ventured into this wing with the intention of finding Harry? What if the two of them had somehow arranged an assignation?
Rage, raw and molten as lava spewed from a volcano, erupted over him at the prospect. Millicent had not been faithful to him for the entire duration of their marriage, though he had never strayed. She had made certain he’d known. He had caught her, several weeks before her death, in flagrante delicto, with a stable hand. He still didn’t know which offense was worse, the fact that she had allowed the man to fuck her with full knowledge that Spencer would see the act, or the fact that she had gifted the rogue servant with coin and precious family heirlooms, enabling him to disappear forever.
His hands clenched into fists at his sides. “It would behoove you to think of Lady Boadicea as your sister from this moment on, for that is all she will ever be to you.”
“If I were made of ice as you are, that would be a simple feat,” Harry growled. “But I am nothing like you, thank God, and I cannot forget the way I feel for her.”
Something snapped within him, and he grasped through the darkness, gripping fistfuls of Harry’s dressing robe. “She is mine, and if you touch her, I will thrash you to within an inch of your life. Do you understand me?”
His brother released a laugh that was equal parts bitter and cocky. “She will never be yours, brother. Never.”
Barely checking his rage, Spencer forced himself to release Harry’s robe and take a step back. “I bid you good night,” he said curtly, before turning and stalking away.
More laughter chased him down the hall.
And the devil of it was that he knew Harry was right. He didn’t understand why the knowledge filled his gut with the heavy weight of dread, or why his entire body was coiled tighter than a spring, or why in God’s name he should give a damn about a wife he did not want and could not even abide one half of the time.
But he did.
As he stalked back to his chamber, he swore he could still smell her scent lingering in the air. But like all his demons, she had vanished back into the dark night from which she’d emerged.
y the third day of her forced rest and isolation, Bo was beginning to think she was a prisoner. Her body’s aches and pains had lessened, but now a different sort of malaise descended upon her: restlessness. If there was one thing she loathed, it was being confined. She couldn’t abide by restrictions and definitely not by a rigidly enforced mandate of rest.
She paced the limits of the duchess’s chamber for what must have been the fiftieth time that morning. Breakfast had been delivered. Cleo had yet to make her obligatory appearance. And Bo was tired of being trapped in Purgatory, lingering where she did not yet belong but would soon be indisputably tethered, rather like a dog upon a chain.
She had not seen Bainbridge since their unexpected collision in the hall, and this omission nettled her in a way it ought not. The morning after that turbulent night, she had awoken to find a guard at her door. Oh, her lady’s maid claimed the man was a footman, but the fellow was quite firm in that he would not allow Bo to step over the threshold.
“His Grace’s orders,” the oaf had said by way of apology, blocking the doorway and refusing to allow her egress.
The adjoining door between her chamber and the duke’s chamber was locked from the opposite side, also ruining her escape via that medium. Subsequent attempts to pick the lock with her hairpins had met with failure. As had an ill-fated effort to shimmy out the window and climb to the ground—her skirts had caught upon the ledge, almost sending her tumbling to her death, and she had deemed it wise to forego all such inquiries into her freedom.
Bainbridge had sent polite notes to her chamber questioning after her wellbeing, as though they were strangers and his hand had not been inside her drawers, and as though he did not still hold her book hostage, likely reading it each night whilst he lay abed. She did not like the distance or the pretense any more than she liked the torturous notion of him reading her book, lying in bed all alone. Something had shifted between them in the hallway, and yet he still seemed determined to pretend as though he was the block of ice he would have the world believe.
Bo wanted to melt his ice. She wanted to go back to that night in the hall and rattle him. Kiss him. Make him do something, anything, other than walk away and then go about the business of pretending she was a simple guest—strike that, prisoner—in his home rather than the woman he had compromised.
Her reaction to him didn’t make sense. Part of her wanted to punish him, and part of her wanted to lure him closer. Perhaps it was all down to her being trapped in her chamber. And nearly going mad for it. Was that what he had done to his wife before her? One began to wonder, and when Bo’s mind wandered, trouble inevitably followed.
“Bloody hell,” she muttered, stalking back about the chamber again. Her back remained sore, but the rest of her was fine. Her mind was in the most trouble, for Lady Boadicea Harrington did not appreciate rules of any sort. She was firmly of the mind that if a rule had been made, it had been necessarily made to be broken. By her.
And so she was thoroughly having enough of Dr. Martinriver’s orders, or whatever his surname had been. To hell with Bainbridge’s high-handedness as well. He had not even deigned to see her in person in three days’ time, so he could not have any inkling as to her wellbeing.
She was perfectly well. The fall had not done her any permanent damage. One more pace around the perimeter of the chamber. She glared at the door. And finally decided she’d had enough.
One steps, two, three, four, and her hand was upon the knob. She turned it without impediment. The door opened soundlessly, and by sheer miracle, the corridor outside was empty. Not a guard or other soul to be seen. She looked to the left, then to the right to confirm before stepping out into the carpeted hall.
Ah, freedom.
The chamber door closed behind her with a quiet snick. For a moment, she stood in the hall, basking in her liberty. Her hesitation proved a dire mistake, however, for the lummox who guarded her chamber appeared at the far end of the hall just then.
“My lady!” he called, his strident voice echoing off the wood-paneled halls.
She turned and beat a hasty path in the opposite direction, pretending as though she hadn’t heard him. His harried footfalls, muffled by the thick carpets, sounded at her back. She
increased her pace, tossing a glance over her shoulder to find him gaining upon her.
No.
Bo could not bear one more day of forced imprisonment. She could own that the initial rest had benefitted her, but she was not the sort of person who relished lying about. She was filled with energy and purpose. Being imprisoned in a chamber—whether in the name of her own health or not—did not suit her in the slightest.
“Halt, my lady! You are under His Grace’s orders to rest,” he called.
“His Grace can go hang for all I care,” she muttered before increasing her speed from rapid walk to outright run.
Bo had mastered the art of sprinting—having a bevy of mischievous sisters and brothers necessitated such an ability. But her jailer’s heavy footsteps seemed to ring ever closer, and this called for more devious means. She headed in the same direction she had taken the night she had wound up colliding with Bainbridge.
Of course, as she attempted to make good on her escape, it occurred to her that traveling in the same path that had led her to the duke was unwise at best and stupid at worst. But the jackanapes charged with confining her to her prison was gaining on her, his feet pounding down the hall behind her as though he competed in a footrace. And above all, she did not wish to be caught. Though she hadn’t been chased by anyone since she’d been in short skirts—not literally, at least—and her robe’s long hem proved something of an impediment, she was still quite quick. And quite determined.
She turned a corner and decided that the best course of action would be to find a chamber and hide herself within until the wretch stomped past. Choosing the first door she came upon, she threw it open and swept inside, closing it as soundlessly and quickly at her back as possible. She leaned against it, catching her breath and holding still as the sound of footfalls pounded in the hall.
Continue on, she urged him inwardly.
All she needed to do was find Cleo and convince her that they must leave this madhouse at once. Perhaps she could even persuade her mother and father to send her to the Continent. Yes, that would be far preferable to consigning herself the fate of being the next Duchess of Bainbridge. The last one had fared none too well. She could lead the Lady’s Suffrage Society from Paris and Clara would do an admirable job of the London post.
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